Perhaps, more than any others, On the Waterfront's five rooftop scenes have captured the popular imagination. We are introduced to the rooftops when Tommy, a teenage member of the Golden Warriors and Terry's loyal sidekick, appears on the roof of the Continental Hotel. The shot clearly catches the decorative iron work atop the hotel. He walks to Terry's pigeon coop, several buildings to the north, where Terry, about to leave, admonishes him, "Be careful. Don't spill no water on the floor. I don't want them to catch no cold." In the second. Edie visits Joey's coop and wanders across the roofs to see Terry's coop, three or four buildings to the north, as well. "I just go for it," he tells her with a classic Brando shrug, when she expresses her surprise that he has been caring for her brother's birds. In the third, a night scene, Edie comes looking for Terry to give him Joey's jacket after the death of Dugan. In the fourth, a Crime Commissioner investigator confronts Terry, who describes how he took a dive in a fight against someone named Wilson several years before, almost blaming Charlie in the process. At first, Terry is cavalier about going in the tank ("I was doin' a favor for a couple pals a mine."), then switches to a more accurate assessment ("When those guys wanna win a bet, there's nothing' they won't stop at.") In the final and most poignant rooftop scene, Terry returns from the Crime Commission hearing to discover that his young protégé has killed all his pigeons. ("What'd he hafta do that for? Everyone of them.") Dismissing Edie's suggestion that they build a new life on a farm somewhere, he looks out onto the river. (The bulkhead between Pier A and Pier B is prominent in the background. Behind that, on the river itself, an ocean liner cruises by.) Reaching a conclusion about his life, he tells Edie, "They always said I was a bum. Well, I ain't a bum, Edie. Don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt nobody. I'm just gonna do down there and get my rights." 
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